Group gives company 'Loan Shark of the Year' award
ACORN demonstrated against Money Mart, which is financed by Wells Fargo. On Thursday, March 2, members of ACORN and ripped off Money Mart customers protested at Money Mart stores in more than 30 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada, including the Money Mart store at Market and Seventh streets in San Francisco.
The group presented Money Mart with a "Loan Shark of the Year" award for "gouging customers through predatory payday lending, criminal check-cashing fees and rip-off refund loans."
"This company's entire business is based on gouging people in need," said ACORN member Paulette Chappill-Otten, "and we aren't going to take it any more."
A resident of the Fillmore, Ms. Chappill-Otten got a payday loan from Money Mart for $500 and wound up paying them back more than $800. The interest rates on Money Mart's payday loans range from 266 percent to 912 percent.
While Money Mart says payday loans help people in a one-time emergency, ACORN charges that payday loans get people deeper in debt and that Money Mart's profits come from customers who can't pay the loans back and so are forced to repeatedly renew the loans and pay additional interest.
A $300 payday loan from Money Mart costs $352.50. If after two weeks the customer can't pay the full amount, they pay the $52.50 finance charge and Money Mart rolls the loan over for two more weeks.
If, as in many cases, this continues for three months, the customer will have paid Money Mart $341 in interest and still owe the entire $352.50 loan amount. Money Mart is the second largest payday lender in the country, behind Advance America, and the second largest check casher, behind ACE Cash Express. Money Mart is financed by Wells Fargo.
ACORN is also demanding that Wells Fargo get out of this business and stop financing Money Mart's unfair lending practices.
For more information about ACORN (www.acorn.org), call (415) 587-9080 or (510) 834-4111 or email them at caacorn at acorn.org.
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